Waiting for The Jasper Xbox 360 with Madman Muntz

I am currently stuck in Xbox 360 limbo. My “Xenon” generation Xbox 360 started to finally die and gave me a Red Ring of Death so I traded it in and currently am without an Xbox system to play my freaking games on. On the flip side of the coin I had a lot of Wii games and PSP games that I am getting around to enjoying.

Recently they moved the memory location to the bottom of the “Falcon” and “Opus” motherboards to prevent it from being heated and cooked by the CPU and GPU and they included a smaller and cooler power supply unit.

I am not sure as to how to identify a “Jasper” system besides checking the manufacturing date. The leaked print sales flyers do not show a significant redesign of the packaging. I just wish that Microsoft would make a big sticker and slap it on the box that said “NEW IMPROVED FLAVOR! NOW WITH 65 NM GPU POWER!” but Microsoft has always remained silent on hardware changes.

Checking manufacturing date is I best way to identify a “Jasper” based Xbox system but we are not going to know when the date that they switched to the “Jasper” manufacturing line from the previous “Falcon” manufacturing line. One of my sources in Microsoft hardware said that late august/early September was when they were targeting for the rollout of the Jasper board.

You can check the manufacturing date on an Xbox 360 by looking at the rectangle cut-out at the top of the box. You might have to move it down with your finger to see the date on the top of the label. It is sort of like squeezing a melon to see if it is fresh.

We are going to have to wait until some nerd buys a new Xbox 360 then decides to violate their warrantee then open it up and take a peek at the internal motherboard design notice changes and then post photos of it on the internet and let the rest of us know what the manufacturing date was.

Currently the Xbox 360 engineers have been in the process of Muntzing the design. To reduce the manufacturing cost and increase the reliability. I think that reducing the price and rolling out a fourth generation motherboard (I don’t consider the “Opus” to be new generation since it is essentially a Falcon board). To recap :

The Xbox 360 motherboard “Xenon” had a 90nm CPU and 90nm GPU and no HDMI.
The Xbox 360 motherboard “Zephyr” had a 90nm CPU and 90nm GPU and HDMI.
The Xbox 360 motherboard “Falcon” had a 65nm CPU and 90nm GPU and HDMI.
The Xbox 360 motherboard “Opus” had a 65nm CPU and 90nm GPU, no HDMI and only included in repaired “Xenon” system cases from Xbox repair centers.
The Xbox 360 motherboard “Jasper” will have a 65nm CPU and new 65nm GPU and HDMI.

They are currently working on the Xbox 360 motherboard “Valhalla” and that will have a combo 65nm CPU/GPU on a single super chip and HDMI. Valhalla is not going to be out for a long time, at least a year or more.

I need to get an Xbox 360 Arcade since I already have a 120 Gig hard drive and a VGA connector. Will the first batch of lower $200 arcade SKUs be the existing falcons or will they be Jaspers? I simply don’t know but I am going to wait as bit but one I get that copy of Rock Band 2 in my hand it is going to be hard to not run out and get a new $199 Xbox 360.

Update: I just want to update my official position on waiting for a Jasper.
If you don’t have an Xbox 360 or you have a dead Xbox 360: Don’t wait, the newer Falcon Xbox 360s have drastically improved. They are not perfect but they are much better. I personally did not wait and so far I love my newer Falcon Xbox 360.
If you have a working Xenon, Zephyr, Falcon or Opus Xbox 360: Wait until you know 100% for certain the Jaspers are out and when you check the numbers you know you are going to get one.

Update: A skillful commenter Dan put together an Excel spreadsheet that can be used to calculate a power usage average of an unknown Xbox 360 motherboard. We don’t know what the power usage of the Jasper system is going to be. Download file
There are some pretty good theories put forth by folks like Jasperhunter below in the many pages of comments.